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The Virtual World

Poetry, the imagination, and the creative life.

Sunday, September 28, 2008

An interesting review/article of The Consequence of Innovation: 21st Century Poetics, Craig Dworkin, ed.(Roof Books, 2008)from the Brooklyn Rail here:

The problem with poetry these days isn’t the literary magazines run by pharmaceutical industry businessmen, or the grants granted by pharmaceutical industry heiresses, or even the grant-granting bodies composed of pharmo-conservo-politicos (and heiresses). And it’s not all the writing about writing, either, or even the writing about the writing about the writing (which, okay, can get annoying). It’s the poetry about the writing about the writing about the writing.
. . .
Perhaps theory should listen to poetry, give up the ideal of the subjectless text, stop denouncing the space between subject and object as simply false, and begin to see it as a devious and sophisticated and thoroughly artificial structure, where something new and alien might come to life.


I couldn't agree more. I am so sick of theory and "poetics." Let's get back to the poems. The poems you read/write because your life depends on them.
Posted by Peter at 8:18 AM
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1 comment:

T. said...

Amen.

September 28, 2008 2:15 PM

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Poetry can communicate before it is understood. ~T. S. Eliot

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Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history. ~ Plato

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A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep. ~ Salman Rushdie

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Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason. ~ Novalis

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Poetry is what maintains our capacity for contemplation and difficulty. — Carolyn Forche

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Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild. — Denis Diderot

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Sometimes something wants to be said, sometimes a way of saying wants to be used. — Paul ValĂ©ry

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